Poetry and Lyre: The role of the chorus in the second stasimon of Oedipus Rex

Abstract

Indebted to the religious rituals performed on the altars dedicated
to the gods, poetry and the lyre find their aesthetic and human strength on the Dionysian stage where spectators have the opportunity to cross their fragile humanity with the virtues of their kings, their heroes and their gods. Along with the knowledge-power of Oedipus, halfway between the divine and the human, stands the chorus which, with a civic and moral voice, questions the figure of
the tyrant and his excesses. In this sense, the second stasimon sung by the choir plays a central role: it gives expression to the feelings of a people who understand that the stain that affects the city is, above all, something essentially political.